What is Wisdom Worth?

As a child, I struggled - as we all do - to be assured of approval. I was desperate for it. Whose approval did I want?

Well, of course, as is the case with any child, I wanted my parents' approval. But I also wanted the approval of teachers at school, Sunday School teachers at church, and perhaps more than all of this - my peers.

Yes, I was a little people pleaser growing up. Not because I wanted everyone to be pleased with me for its own sake necessarily. It wasn't really praise I was after. Mostly I wanted to avoid getting in trouble with anyone in authority, and wanted to avoid being looked down upon or teased by my peers. I was ruled by fear - the fear of the consequences of a lack of approval.

My desire for approval, however, was a red herring. Have you ever heard of where the term "red herring" comes from? Well, ok, first and foremost, it's one of those secret terms that only well educated people are familiar with, so they use them as much as possible in order to impress their audience with their erudition. The word erudition is another such word. It just means you want to impress the audience with how smart you are or how well read and well educated you are. To be all those things is to be erudite. See? Now you too can be in the club, and can dumbfound your audience with how stupid they are in comparison to yourself...

Yes, I'm talking to you, preachers.

But I got off topic. I was talking about red herrings. Actually, I just succumbed to a bit of a red herring myself. A red herring is simply a distraction. The term comes from when people would train hunting dogs or blood hounds or whatever to track by scent. They'd give the dog a scent to track, and then they would use red herrings (a particularly pungent kind of fish) in an attempt to distract the dog from the scent they were tracking. This taught the dog to be disciplined and focused on the task at hand.

So my desire for approval from literally everyone (anyone) was just a red herring - it was a distraction. Whose approval did I actually want? God's of course.

When I had no choice but to walk away from the ministry, THIS was the most painful aspect of it. I was just absolutely sure that I did not have God's approval anymore, if I had ever had it at all.

This is the most difficult part of abandoning the ministry, and it is especially difficult if it comes in the context of also being rejected by the church.

At any rate, back to childhood. I can remember being so desperate for approval (or rather, some assurance of approval that might penetrate my thick skull) that I grew quite frustrated with my entire life situation. I remember quite vividly crying myself to sleep growing up, often accompanied by pillow-muffled screams.

Now, you may think that's a little unusual. But then again, maybe you don't. Or maybe you do, despite the fact that you can probably relate to it. But the truth is, I was THAT kid growing up. You know, the one no one wanted on their team (I sure hope teachers have figured out by now that letting kids pick teams is just an awful thing to do), the one the other kids always made fun of. Kids can be cruel.

So you'll understand why the story of Solomon appealed to me so strongly.

You see, one Sunday, I went to church, and heard the story of how Solomon became king of Israel. When Samuel anointed Solomon as king, he told him on behalf of the Lord that he could ask for anything - ANYTHING - he wanted, and it would be granted.

Well, Solomon apparently gave the best answer one could give when presented with such an opportunity. He asked for wisdom. I didn't remember the details. I only remembered what he asked for and how the Lord responded. The Lord, I was told, was PLEASED. So pleased, in fact, that he bestowed great wealth on him and wisdom and he became Israel's greatest king.

Of course, as a kid, the riches was totally lost on me, and I certainly couldn't understand why anyone would want 1,000 wives (what's a concubine?). However, I did figure out that Solomon asked for wisdom and it pleased the Lord.

To me, this was a magic formula. To me, it was as simple as putting two quarters in a soda machine (remember that?) and getting a can of Coke. The request for wisdom was two quarters and the Lord's pleasure with me was my can of Coke which I desperately wanted.

So every day from that day on - well into high school I think - I prayed for wisdom when saying my bedtime prayers and thought of Solomon.

Now, you might say that my theology was all screwed up. It was. You might also say that I was trying to manipulate God into approving of me. I was. But I was also just a kid. As tainted with sin as that prayer was, it wasn't ONLY sinful. After all, I just wanted God to be PLEASED with me. He himself told me in his Word that it's good to ask for wisdom, and I believed it and asked him for it myself. So it wasn't all bad, nor was it all good. But that's pretty much all I can say about the prayers I said this morning.

For example, I recently helped a friend get a job. He thanked me profusely. He assumed that I had gone out of my way to help him simply because I was being kind to him. After all, he needed a job and I was able to help and I gave it to him. And when he thanked me, I looked at him with a smile and said, "Are you kidding? I didn't do it for you. I did it to feed my ego." Of course, I was joking. But the best jokes have an element of truth to them, and this was no exception (and yes, we both laughed - it's all about the timing). The truth is, the help I provided him was not purely altruistic. In some sense it was about feeding my ego. When I was a child, I idolized the idea of the mafia don who bestowed favors on people all the time, who then owed him a favor in return, along with their loyalty and their love. This is one of those ways that I've just always been tempted.

However, it would be wrong of me to withhold that help from my friend, simply because my help would be tainted with sin. Sure, I took some pride in having helped someone. And knowing that in advance, maybe I could (should?) have refrained from helping him to avoid the temptation. But then he wouldn't have been helped and wouldn't have a job. So I did it, and yes, I did indulge in a little secret self congratulations. But the Lord used it anyway to provide my friend and brother in Christ a job that he really, REALLY needed.

In the same way, the Lord used my sin-tainted prayers as a child to bring about his purposes. He did answer those prayers. He did give me wisdom.

You know, when I was a child, I was pretty sure that Solomon was given wisdom in much the same way that Neo learned Kung Fu in the Matrix. If, for some reason you haven't seen the Matrix, please correct yourself as soon as possible. In it, Neo basically downloads knowledge like a computer. In 10 seconds, he learns Kung Fu. Anyway, it seemed very much to me that in the story of Solomon, he asked for wisdom and then was instantly wise. In Solomon's case, that may be how it happened.

For the rest of us, however, it's not. I had little idea what I was actually asking for. It turns out that the road to wisdom is paved with suffering. For example, see Heb 5:8, which says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering.

Now, I've often had quite a bit of trouble understanding that. How is it that the sinless Son of God had to LEARN obedience? Well, I don't think it really means that he had to learn HOW to obey, so much as he learned what it TAKES to obey. In suffering, Jesus learned specifically what it COSTS to obey.

In the same way, I think, wisdom has a price. You aren't born with it. You suffer and then become wise. Perhaps Solomon had a rough childhood. After all, his mom and dad had an adulterous affair, after which his mother got pregnant, which caused his father to have his mother's first husband killed so that their adultery wouldn't be called to account.

It may be the case that Solomon's brothers, and possibly even the people of Israel gave him a hard time about that. In fact, it's probably quite likely. The Jews thought that bloodlines were a very big deal. And everyone probably knew at the time what happened. We still know all about it 3,000 years later! I think Solomon probably had a rough time of it. Maybe he even screamed himself to sleep a time or two. Perhaps that's where his humility came from, as exhibited by his response to the prophet who anointed him king.

But whatever the case, I'm pretty sure wisdom is learned through painful experience. For instance, if you get an adjustable rate mortgage that you can just barely afford to make the payments on today, and the payments skyrocket tomorrow because the interest rates finally rose, so that you eventually have to foreclose on your house, chances are you will wisely avoid anything but a fixed rate mortgage going forward. Thus a tiny seed of wisdom is planted in someone's heart and nourished with suffering.

If you ever have a chance to go to visit someone in the hospital who has been battling some disease for a long time, please do so. You'll find that they're very wise. They care very little for the things of this world, and they look to the age to come. What a pleasure and joy it is to visit some sweet little old lady, barely alive in her hospital bed, who is nonetheless sweet to the nurses, kind to the other patients, worried about taking her pastor's time, grateful that he would come see her, etc. Wisdom. She knows from her suffering that what really matters is not this age, but the age to come. She's ok with suffering in the body for a time because she is looking forward to being raised from the dead.

And so it is with those who have been badly burned, spurned and abused by the people of God, the church. You see, they have been exposed to the ugliness that persists in every church of every denomination, no matter who the pastor is, no matter how godly the elders, how high the offerings are, how many people sit in the pews, etc. Every church everywhere is tainted. Every church everywhere is impure.

And every pastor, at any time, can find himself suddenly shepherding a flock of wolves, bursting and belching because they have eaten all the sheep and have turned their greedy eyes to their shepherd (or the shepherd's intern).

God promised to meet your needs. God promised you salvation in Christ. He did NOT promise that you could always be a pastor.

Oh, how I hoped in my own desires as if they were promises of God! I graduated seminary, I landed an internship, I endured the worst that that minister and elders could dish out during said internship, and I even endured the seemingly required year or so of unemployment while I waited for my first call. But that call never came. Was God being unfaithful to me? Was God being mean or cruel?

No.

At what time did God promise me in his Word that if I did all the things just mentioned that I would earn the right to be a minister?

Without realizing it, I had devised my own covenant of works and assumed that God had entered into that covenant with me. According to my covenant, I'd check all the boxes required to be a minister and if I checked all those boxes, I'd become a minister. That was God's responsibility to me. We each had our responsibilities in the equation. I did my part, he did his.

But that's not how it works, is it?

God promised us that if we would just worry about seeking his kingdom and his righteousness (whose righteousness - mine or God's?), then he would take care of the clothes on our back, the roof over our heads and the food in our bellies. It may be that he'll give you a job, or it may be that the deacons will help you.

God promised us that if we have faith in Jesus Christ, he will impute the righteousness of Christ to us and permanently unite us to his Son by his indwelling Spirit, who will be at work in us, conforming us to the image of his Son, growing us in righteousness and reforming the desires of our hearts. And he promised to do this completely by his grace, by his mercy, not for anything done in us, or by us, but simply because he chose us.

Oh, they say, but God is love! How can he choose only SOME? When I choose to marry my wife, am I being unloving to all the other women in the world? And at the same time, if I choose every woman in the world, what makes any of them special? As they say, when everyone is special, no one is.

But I digress. The point is, God promised us salvation from the condemnation earned by our sin, the condemnation of eternal death, and instead has promised us eternal life by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And he has promised to provide for our needs.

But he never promised I could be a minister. He never promised any former minister that that man could retire a minister. In fact, the Bible says in Jude that "certain men have crept in among" us, and that those men are up to no good. They're here to cause trouble, and trouble they will cause.

For you ministers out there who want to believe that your church will never turn on you, or that your ability to make the people in your church like and appreciate you is the source of your security, think again. Who killed Jesus? Who was screaming, crucify, crucify? It was not those outside the church. It was the church.

Who was it that threw Jeremiah into a sewer? Who persecuted Paul? Who murdered the prophets? On whose heads did Jesus place the guilt for all the prophets?

It has ALWAYS been the people of God who had the most hostility toward the prophets, toward those who speak to them on God's behalf.

We are always so concerned about the evil outside the church. Who cares? It's all small time compared to the evil WITHIN the church. The church contains the greatest evil that has ever been on earth. They are Satan's hidden sleeper agents, walking among us, pretending to be one of us. They're so good at it they have begun to believe their own lies.

And they are everywhere.

What price would you be willing to pay to gain wisdom?

God asks us all to pay different costs, but make no mistake, we will all suffer to gain wisdom. We have to. There's no other way to learn. You cannot learn that debt is dumb until you get deep into debt and have to work your butt off to get out of it. You cannot learn to be wary of office politics until you've been stabbed in the back.

God wants us to be wise. Christ is our wisdom, says the Scriptures. But he learned through suffering. We do too.

And God sure did answer those many prayers as a child.

He has answered those prayers many, many times over.

But there is one time when he answered that prayer the loudest, the clearest.

When I was left with no choice but to walk away from the ministry, that's when God answered the prayers of a child who once desperately asked God for wisdom, just because he only wanted to please his God.

And as I reflect back on all that anger, all those feelings of betrayal, how I felt so hurt and rejected by God - I have actually been taught something by that little boy I used to be once upon a time. That little boy was willing to do ANYTHING to please God.

Well, one day, God asked me to walk away from a career I had been carefully cultivating for about a decade. All that effort I put forth, all the sweat, tears, money, stress - not to mention the price my wife paid - all of it had to matter less to me than pleasing God. I had no choice.

My God asked me to lay it all aside and, like Abraham, to go to the land which he would show me later.

That's when God answered the desperate pleas of a little boy. Because when I said, over and over, "Please give me wisdom," I was really saying, "Please just let me glorify you."

It's a privilege to have walked this road. It really is. I have learned more than I could ever possibly articulate in something like a relatively incoherent blog post. I have gained some small measure of wisdom through what I have suffered.

And it was all worth it.

What is Wisdom Worth?

The price I paid was small. I would pay much more.

I am tempted to wish that God would ask less of you, but then, that would be to wish that God would give you a smaller measure of wisdom. And I wish you a large measure of his wisdom, and I hope he gives me much more.

And I know what it costs.